My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [5]
Seriously, I despise rats but I’ve got to give the old boy8 props for timing.
We stepped up our trapping efforts for a while, until Fletch again claimed we were tilting at windmills.9 He said there was no way any rodent would still be here, what with the six hungry carnivores we keep. He promised me that nothing could survive the killing fields of our house and that the second the guys caught the scent of vermin, their instincts would kick in, and it would be over. Dogs and cats would work together to circle and trap their prey, snapping and tearing and rending flesh before going all Lord of the Flies, putting the tiny rat/mouse head on a stake as a warning to any others who dared cross their path.
Fletch sounded convincing, yet when I looked at the five furry mass murderers, all snoozing comfortably together on the guest bed, I had my doubts.10
A couple of weeks ago, Fletch needed to access a plug in his little back-porch office. I heard him moving furniture to get to the outlet be fore poking his head into the kitchen to ask me, “Hey, why do you think there are a hundred pieces of dog food behind the couch?”
“Hmm,” I replied, “I guess maybe because the ratinmyhouse you promised had left? Didn’t.”
That was when my rat-based nightmares started. I saw them everywhere—swimming in the toilet, helping themselves to blocks of cheese in my fridge, hiding in my car, et cetera. I took to tucking my pants into my socks for fear of one running up my leg.
This goddamned creature turned me into Carl Spackler from Caddyshack as I tried to get him with nontraditional means, and by nontraditional means, let’s just say there was more running around the kitchen banging pot lids together than I care to mention.
I decided the reason we weren’t able to flush him11 out was because we didn’t know where he was hiding. So, I came up with yet another cunning plan. I spread flour in front of all the places I thought he might be. I figured that he’d walk in the flour and leave little powdery footprints behind him, and I could ambush him in his home.
Again, did I mention the cunning part?
Yeah.
And . . . here are the lessons I learned from this little CSI: Martha Stewart exercise:
(a) Although they will leave a slash where their tail trails (thus confirming their continued presence and prompting me to spray my counters with more bleach) rat feet are too small to pick up enough flour to leave tracks.
(b) Cat feet, however, are not. Would you like a detailed account of every place each of my extraordinarily busy cats walked the night of the experiment? Because I can give you one.
(c) Stupid pit bulls named Maisy believe raw flour is the most delicious treat imaginable and will lap that shit up until the combination of flour and saliva glues her jaw shut.
(d) Flour, particularly when combined with pit bull saliva, will never, ever completely come out of hardwood. Or leather. Or wool.
(e) This is somewhat unrelated to the experiment, but watching Ratatouille will actually not prevent me from being squicked out by the idea of vermin and may12 actually cause a minor panic attack whenever congregating rats are shown. And suddenly, my nightmares are sponsored by Pixar.
Anyway, we’d seen neither hide nor hair of any rodent for a couple of weeks, so today I’d let my guard down.
Oh, wait, I have another rat-related lesson:
(f) Never let your guard down.
After a rigorous basement workout of scouring litter boxes, I took my garbage bag of doody out the basement door. I walked through the backyard and into the garage, where I opened the door to the alley. I lifted the lid on the big black garbage can the city provides to control the rat population. And it was at this point that I happened upon something gray and furry, snout buried in an old cat food tin, residing in the one apparatus in this trash-strewn alley meant to deter rats.
In his surprise at having been happened upon, said vermin then